VERIFYING A NODE ON A NETWORK

摘要

A system and method includes timing parameters within a node-verification protocol, such as OCPS, to facilitate a determination of the proximity of a target node to a source node. The node-verification protocol includes a query-response sequence, wherein the source node communicates a query to the target node, and the target node communicates a corresponding response to the source node. The source node establishes a lower bound on the distance between the source node and the target node based on a measure of the time required to effect this query-response sequence. The time required to effect this sequence includes the time required to communicate the query and response, as well as the time required to process the query and generate the response. The target node includes a measure of the time required to process the query and generate the response to the source node. The source node subtracts this time from the total query-response time to determine the time consumed for the communication. This communication time is compared to a threshold value to determine whether the target node is local or remote relative to the source node.